THE NEW YORK TIMES: n 2017, Emmanuel Macron was “a meteor born under a lucky star.” A former banker without experience in elective office, he benefited during his first presidential campaign from President François Hollande choosing not to seek re-election, while the conservative candidate and front-runner, François Fillon, faced an embezzlement charge.
In 2022, the planets appeared to align once more, this time on account of international circumstances rather than national dynamics. As president of the European Union since January, Mr. Macron has enhanced his status as a legitimate interlocutor with Vladimir Putin, even if his attempts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been unsuccessful. All opinion polls have shown Mr. Macron leading in Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, but his lead has been swiftly declining.
In his first campaign, Mr. Macron claimed to be “neither left nor right ,” a slogan that had seduced many who are weary of the old political divisions. Once elected, however, he quickly revealed what that meant in practice. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, shrinking the welfare state and hollowing out democracy, Mr. Macron drifted rightward, to the point of shocking some members of La République En Marche!, his party.
Far from changing course, Mr. Macron appears to be doubling down. In recent months, his appeal to the right-wing electorate has become ever more explicit, orienting his platform around two of the right’s traditional themes — control of immigration and stiffening of secularism. It may deliver him another victory. But Mr. Macron is playing a dangerous game. By absorbing his opponents’ views into his own platform, he risks bringing about a political landscape hazardously skewed to the right. » | Didier Fassin | Saturday, April 9, 2022
Didier Fassin, anthropologist and physician, is James D. Wolfensohn professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
